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How to send Private Messages in the new forum software

Keeper of the Asylum

Things are a little different. Instead of Private Messages, they are called Conversations. However, they are essentially the same thing. You can initiate them several ways.

The first is to click the Inbox by your name.

If you are using a mobile device with a smaller screen, it will look like this,

If you are viewing a thread, you can just hover over someone's avatar with your mouse and wait a few seconds to get this,

On a small screen mobile device, doing that would look like this, but instead of hovering with the mouse, just tap the avatar with your finger.

On a big screen or small screen device, you can also click the Inbox (envelope) icon as in the first image, then either hover the mouse over an avatar in your list of recent conversations or tap it with your finger, and it will look like this,

Once you pick a method, the rest is pretty straight forward with one exception. Think of conversations almost like a post on FaceBook. You can leave private or you can choose to allow other people to be invited into the conversation. So keep in mind that what you type might not STAY private if someone is invited down the line. Rather than deleting conversations, you leave them. When the last person leaves, the conversation is actually deleted. Conversations will be presented in a format similar to viewing a discussion thread anywhere else on the forum so that you can see the entire back and forth of the conversation just be scrolling up and down the page instead of trying to exit out of one PM so you can read a prior PM.

It may take a little getting used to, but once you do, I think you will find that it works much better than the old PM system we had on vB.

By default, if you don't check either of the two boxes under the message, you and the people you send it to will be the only ones that can see it. They will NOT be able to invite anyone else into the conversation. If you check the box to allow anyone to invite other people in, it is no longer private because you won't always know who will be able to eventually see it.

The lock conversation option is a strange one for general usage. I could see it being more for admins/mods where they might send a warning to one or more users and NOT invite discussion on a topic. Still, even if you did use it, there is nothing to stop someone from just starting a new conversation with you